Alex Rabbetts

Surrey, UK

Data Centre Specialist

We’ve built over a million square feet of data centres – five years ago we were building with a power ratio of 750w to 1000w per square metre, today we typically deliver 8Kw per cabinet. Not surprisingly the power and cooling infrastructure required to support this has grown dramatically in size and cost. The article’s right, there are long term solutions to these issues. However, in the meantime, there are actions data centre managers can take today to reduce power consumption, and take the pressure off.

First, there’s the ‘off switch’. We’ve all grown up with ‘bad habits’ created by a cheap energy culture. Learning to change these habits can make a difference: keeping data centres lit up 24/7 is unnecessary, managed lighting with use of low energy bulbs and controlled zones is a viable alternative. It is not only a matter of changing our own habits, we should challenge other people’s too! For example, application developers tend to specify new equipment to support their software but an examination of the actual, rather than perceived, load often reveals a processor utilisation of around 10-20%. If this is the case, consider combining non-critical applications on a single server.

A data centre audit will usually identify pragmatic opportunities for 'quick wins' like these and they can make an immediate difference to the heat and power loading, the CO2 footprint and the data centre’s electricity bill.